IR437 NATIONALISM AND ETHNICITY

NATIONALISM IN INDIA

NATIONALISM IN INDIA

• India was one of the most important territory in the British Empire

• As in the Middle East, nationalism was spreading in India especially when the First World War broke out

• Some Indians wanted independence but some were willing to remain under the British Empire but demanded home rule

• During the First World War, Indian nationalists supported Great Britain and its allies.

• More than a million soldiers fought in the battlefields of the Middle East and Africa

WHY WAS INDIA IMPORTANT TO THE BRITISH EMPIRE?

• India was known as the jewel in the crown of the British Empire

• Has a lot of natural resources like wheat, cotton (textiles), salt and spices

• British accumulated a lot of wealth from India through trade and taxes

• British also recruited many Indians to join its army to fight the war

• Soldiering was an honourable tradition in India and the British capitalised on this. They regimented India’s manpower as the backbone of their military power. Indian troops helped the British control their empire, and they played a key role in fighting for Britain right up to the 20th century.

RISE OF NATIONALISM IN INDIA

• The rise of nationalism in India is directly connected to anti-colonial movement

• Many demanded independence from the British but this did not come easy for India

• Many felt they were oppressed by the British rule and felt unfair that the British Empire had prospered through the wealth that came from India

• Indians had to be united to fight against the British but this was a major problems as there were conflicts and tensions between the Muslims and the Hindus in India

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

• A new political and economic situation was created by the war

• The prices of all commodities went up

• Common people faced extreme hardship

• Villages were called upon to supply soldiers

• Forced recruitment caused anger

• Crops failed and there were shortages of food

• Influenza epidemic spread throughout the country

• Many died due to famines and epidemic

INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS

• Indian National Congress, byname Congress Party, broadly based political party of India. Formed in 1885, the Indian National Congress dominated the Indian movement for independence from Great Britain and has formed most of India’s governments from the time of independence.

• During its first several decades, the Congress passed fairly moderate reform resolutions, though many within the organization were becoming radicalized by the increased poverty that accompanied British imperialism.

• In the early 20th century, elements within the party began to endorse a policy of swadeshi (“of our own country”), which called for the boycott of imported British goods and the promotion of Indian-made goods.

THE ROWLATT ACT 1919 INDIA• Rowlatt Acts, (February 1919), legislation passed by the Imperial Legislative Council, the

legislature of British India.

• The acts allowed certain political cases to be tried without juries and permitted internment of suspects without trial.

• Their object was to replace the repressive provisions of the wartime Defence of India Act (1915) by a permanent law. They were based on the report of Justice S.A.T. Rowlatt’s committee of 1918.

• The Rowlatt Acts were much resented by an aroused Indian public.

• All nonofficial Indian members of the council (i.e., those who were not officials in the colonial government) voted against the acts.

• Mahatma Gandhi organized a protest movement that led directly to the Massacre of Amritsar.

AMRITSAR MASSACRE

• After the war, the Indian National Congress staged demonstrations to protest the British rule

• But the nationalist movement was divided by religion

• The Hindu majority and the Muslim minority did not trust each other and the British authority encouraged that distrust

• Many British people were unwilling to see their Empire reduced and was not prepared to let go of India

• British came up with a new law to suppress the nationalist movement: that they could arrest anyone without cause and jail anyone without trial

AMRITSAR MASSACRE 1919

• The British had outlawed all large gatherings and declared that it would respond to any violations with force

• In April 1919, unarmed Indians gathered in the garden in Amritsar for political meeting and the British soldiers began shooting at them.

• 400 people were dead including children. 1200 were injured

• Since that incident, Indians were more determined to get their independence from the British and they held many meetings after that and went against the British rule.

MAHATMA GANDHI

• Mahatma Gandhi was the primary leader of India’s independence movement and also the architect of a form of non-violent civil disobedience that would influence the world.

• Born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, Mahatma Gandhi studied law and advocated for the civil rights of Indians, both at home under British rule and in South Africa.

• Gandhi became a leader of India’s independence movement, organizing boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil disobedience.

GANDHI’S CAMPAIGNS

• When Gandhi returned to India, he began working with the Indian national Congress and led a non-violent movement for self government and for greater tolerance among country’s many social and religious groups

• Gandhi urged Indians to reject much of Western civilization for its use of brute force, its worshipped of money and its prejudiced attitude towards Western people

• The Indians called Gandhi “Mahatma” meaning “great soul”

SATYAGRAHA

• Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violent protest won him international attention

• He believed that one could force an evil person or government to change by challenging it directly but without violence

• He used the term “satyagraha” which means “truth force” to describe non violence protests that he led after the Amritsar massacre

• One form of protest that he led was the boycott of British cloth and other manufactured goods

• Gandhi urged Indians to begin spinning their own cloth

• Gandhi himself a simple white homespun cloth for the rest of his life

SATYAGRAHA

• The term means insistence on truth using non violent non cooperation

• Literally it means struggle for the truth

• Three main principles of satyagraha:

Truth

Refusal to harm others

Willingness for self sacrifice in the cause

• This was the weapon Gandhi used against the British

• Satyagraha was organized all over India to support the peasants, cotton mill workers and Indians in general

SATYAGRAHA

• Non-violent methods:The non-cooperation movement – aimed at bringing the government to a

standstill by withdrawing any support to administrationThe civil disobedience movement – was planned to paralyze the government

by mass support y undertaking acts which the British government considered illegal but were protests against exploitative and suppressive measures

SATYAGRAHA

• The civil disobedience was organized against repressive laws. The Congress led by Gandhi demanded:

Reduction in land revenue

Abolition of salt tax

Cutting down military expenditure

Levying duty on foreign cloth

SALT MARCH

• The British controlled the salt mines and the ocean salt fields

• They taxed every grain of salt they sold and jailed Indians who gathered salt on their own

• In 1930, Gandhi protested the salt tax

• He gathered his followers to the sea where they made salt from sea water

• The British arrested thousands of his followers and soon after Gandhi was arrested as well

• But the protests increased and continued throughout 1930s

• The violence by the British could not stop the spread of nationalism in India

LIMITED SELF RULE• Under pressure from the nationalist movement, the British began to give Indians more

political power

• 1935, the British passed the Government of India Act which created a constitution for India

• This measures gave provincial legislatures control over making of law in the provinces

• Areas such as education, public health, agriculture, public works came under the control of the provincial governments

• The British government retained control of national law making, finance, defence and foreign affairs

• Majority of Indian nationalist rejected the act however, Indian National Congress with the insistence of Gandhi accepted it as the fırst step towards self rule

HINDU-MUSLIM RELATIONS

• As India moved towards independence in 1930s, conflicts among Indians increased

• As independence approached, Muslims began to worry about their future treatment by the Hindus

• In 1937, the Indian National Congress controlled by Hindus won election majorities in 7 out of 11 provinces

• The rest were won by Muslims. This heightened bitter feelings

• The Muslim League headed by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, demanded a separate Muslim nation for the millions of Muslims in India which led to the creation of Pakistan

• The Hindus led by Jawaharlal Nehru, a follower of Gandhi wanted a united India

• In 1939 the two nationalist movement was split into two and Gandhi’s pleas for toleration were ignored by both sides

INDIAN INDEPENDENCE• On 3 June 1947, Viscount Louis Mountbatten, the last British Governor General of

India, announced the partitioning of British India into India and Pakistan.

• With the speedy passage through the British Parliament of the Indian Independence Act 1947, at 11:57 on 14 August 1947 Pakistan was declared a separate nation, and at 12:02, just after midnight, on 15 August 1947, India also became a sovereign and democratic nation.

• Eventually, August 15 became the Independence Day for India, due to the ending of British rule over India. On that August 15, both Pakistan and India had the right to remain in or remove themselves from the British Commonwealth. In 1949, India decided to remain in the commonwealth.

• Violent clashes between Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims followed. Prime Minister Nehru and deputy prime minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel invited Mountbatten to continue as Governor General of India.

INDIAN NATIONALISM

• Indian Nationalism grew partly as a result of colonial policies and partly as a reaction to colonial policies in fact, it would be more correct to see Indian nationalism as a product of a mix of various factors.

• Understanding of Contradiction in Indian and Colonial InterestsPeople came to realise that colonial rule was the major cause of India’s

economic backwardness and that the interests of the Indians involved the interests of all sections and classes.

The very condition of British rule helped the growth of national sentiment among the Indian people.

POLITICAL, ADMINISTRATIVE AND ECONOMIC UNIFICATION OF THE COUNTRY:

• Nationalist sentiments grew easily among the people because India was unified and welded into a nation during the 19th and 20th centuries.

• The introduction of a uniform and modern system of government by the British throughout the country unified it administratively.

• The destruction of the rural and local self-sufficient economy and the introduction of modern trade and industries on an all- India scale had increasingly made India’s economic life a single whole and interlinked the economic fate of people living in different parts of the country.

• Furthermore, the introduction of the railways, telegraph and unified postal systems had brought the different parts of the country together and promoted mutual contact among the people, especially among the leaders.

WESTERN THOUGHT AND EDUCATION:

• As a result of the spread of modern western education and thought during the 19th century, a large number of Indians had a modern rational, secular, democratic and nationalist political outlook.

• The spread and popularity of the English language helped nationalist leaders of different linguistic regions to communicate with each other.

• Modern education also created a certain uniformity and community of outlook and interests among the educated Indians.

• This English-educated intelligentsia formed the nucleus for the newly-arising political unrest, and it was this section of the society which provided leadership to the Indian political associations.

REDISCOVERY OF INDIA’S PAST.

• The historical researches by Europeans scholars, such as Max Mueller, Monier Williams, Roth, Sassoon, and by Indian scholars such as R.G. Bhandarkar, R.L. Mitra and later Swami Vivekananda created an entirely new picture of India’s past glory and greatness.

• The theory put forward by European scholars that the Indo-Aryans belonged to the same ethnic group of mankind from which stemmed all the nations of Europe gave a psychological boost to educated Indians.

• All these inspired the educated Indians with a new spirit of patriotism and nationalism.

ROLE OF PRESS AND LITERATURE

• With the emergence of the modern press, both English and vernacular (native language), the latter half of the 19th century saw an unprecedented growth of Indian-owned English and vernacular newspapers.

• The Indian Press played a notable role in mobilising public opinion, organising political movements, fighting out public opinions and promoting nationalism.

PROGRESSIVE CHARACTER OF SOCIO-RELIGIOUS REFORM MOVEMENTS.

• These reform movements sought to remove social evils which divided the Indian society; this had the effect of bringing different sections of the society together.

• Since many reform movements drew their inspiration from India’s rich cultural heritage, these promoted pan-Indian feelings and spirit of nationalism.

REACTIONARY POLICIES AND RACIAL ARROGANCE OF RULERS.

• An important factor in the growth of national sentiments in India was the tone of racial superiority adopted by many Englishmen in their dealings with Indians.

• The reactionary policies of the British government were also responsible for the growth of political associations.